State Control Of Alcohol Distribution

The legal drinking age in the United States will always be a point of contention. No one can settle upon a drinking age that everyone is in agreement with; should it be 18 or 21? Ages 18 and 21 are the most popular options, yet neither one has 100% of the vote. With the current legal drinking age in America standing at 21, meaning that people under the age of 21 cannot purchase or consume alcoholic food or beverages, there is the question of whether or not to lower it to 18 or 19 years old. This paper will argue that the drinking age should be lowered, and examine its impact on State University.

The stakeholder group that will gain most of the benefit from lowering the drinking age to 18 is the alcohol companies. In a sense, the stakeholders between ages 18 and 20 and alcohol companies go hand in hand. Because these young adults are, for the most part, eager to purchase alcohol, the potential skyrocket in sales for that age group would ensure massive profits for alcohol companies. This is made clear considering that underage drinkers in the United States consumed “an estimated 19.7% of the total alcohol consumed”

When the Prohibition era in the United States began on January 19, 1920, a few sage observers predicted it would not go well. Certainly, previous attempts to outlaw the use of alcohol in American history had fared poorly. When a Massachusetts town banned the sale of alcohol in 1844, an enterprising tavern owner took to charging patrons for the price of seeing a striped pig—the drinks came free with the price of admission. When Maine passed a strict prohibition law in 1851, the result was not temperance, but resentment among the city's working class and Irish immigrant population. A deadly riot in Portland in 1855 lead to the law's repeal. Now, Prohibition was being implemented on a national scale, and being enshrined in the Constitution no less. What followed was a litany of unintended consequences.

I. Introduction: Starting in 1970 21 states reduced the minimum drinking age to 18. Another 8 reduced it to 19 or 20. However, these states noticed increases in alcohol-related fatalities among teenagers and young adults. As a result, of the 29 states that had lowered their drinking age, 24 raised the age again between 1976 and 1984. By 1984, only three states allowed 18-year-olds to drink all types of alcoholic liquor. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds. The states who raised it were given highway funding by the

In over 100 countries across the world, the act of legally possessing and consuming alcohol is permissible below the age of 21, most often within the age range of 18-20. Nevertheless, there are many additional countries such as Spain and Haiti, which enforce a minimum age of 16 years among citizens. With the ratification of the controversial 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the United States federal government now requires each state to conform to the drinking age restriction of 21, or otherwise endure a penalty, encompassing a 10% reduction of federal highway transportation funds, attributed to the state in violation. Unfortunately, despite the conviction that a higher minimum drinking age prevents destructive, irrational actions conducted as a product of holding an underdeveloped brain, this federal ruling not only increases the seductive temptation of underage drinking, but additionally and equally promotes organized crime within the United States-a toxic societal conflict which would effectively be negated by a reduction of the minimum federal drinking age.

In 1984, the United States’ federal government passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Under this Act, the federal government gives highway funds to States that forbid people under the age of twenty-one years old from “purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages”(23 U.S.C. § 158). The incentive created a sense of a standardized minimum drinking age despite the fact that legally there cannot be a federal minimum drinking age. Even though this Act has been in effect for decades, there are many debates on whether or not the age should be changed. The minimum legal drinking age should stay the same because it prevents a large number of drinking and driving accidents; it reduces overall alcohol consumption; and it has very horrible health effects on youth.

In 1984, the United States’ federal government passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Under this act, the federal government gives highway funds to States that forbid people under the age of twenty-one years old from “purchasing or publicly possessing alcoholic beverages”(23 U.S.C. § 158). The incentive created a sense of a standardized minimum drinking age when legally there cannot be a federal minimum drinking age. Even though this Act has been in effect for decades, there are many debates on whether or not the age should be changed. The minimum legal drinking age should stay the same because it prevents a large number of drinking and driving accidents; it reduces overall alcohol consumption; and it has very horrible health effects on youth.

In “Scaring a Nation Dry: Propaganda in Prohibition,” Kimberly Hickey provides a detailed essay about the distribution of misleading information about alcohol in the United States during in the twentieth century. Hickey affirms that prohibition groups emerged decades prior to the law’s enactment. (2) Hickey states, “The enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment marked the beginning of the era of “the noble experiment.” The experiment, as President Herbert Hoover referred to it, was an attempt to limit the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol in the United States.” (4) By referring to the law as the “noble experiment” implies that this law set a standard as to how citizens should act. Therefore, making ethical claims that intoxication

With America’s strong dependence of alcohol prior to, and even after, the enactment of the 18th amendment, one may wonder how a country drowning in liquor could possibly support the banning of alcohol, or Prohibition. In the years leading up to January 16th, 1919, support for Prohibition went from a handful of advocates, including devout protestant women praying in front of saloons, to quite possibly a majority (While one cannot be entirely certain, support for Prohibition was at least relatively equal to its lack of support.) of citizens demanding Prohibition. Many significant events lead to this growing support, yet eight of these events which are outlined in Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition were especially significant.

Most countries around the world have adopted MLDA laws for the purchase and /or possession of alcohol as a protective policy for the youth. Scientific evidence indicates that the lower the drinking age, the earlier the youth begin to decrease alcohol (at least in the United States). MLDA laws are vital components of any effort to control the production, marketing, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages (Philip, 528). Several studies have indicated that more accidents occurred as a result of lower drinking age. As a result there has been advocacy for restoring MLDA to 21. Due to such advocacy campaigns, 16 states increased their MLDA between September 1976 and January 1983. The US government also lowered this age to 21 too.

Getting to 18 years of age is an important milestone for a US resident because it is the legal age for independence, allowing the individual to make his or her decisions regarding tobacco smoking, driving and even joining the armed forces while being treated as an adult by the justice system. While this statement is essentially accurate, it is untrue concerning the ability to purchase and drink alcohol. This is because the US law has set the threshold for alcohol purchase and consumption at 21 years of age (Mistral 1980). The question then remains; if an individual is considered an adult at 18 years of age, is it not right to allow them to purchase and consume alcohol at the same age? Answering this question has been a matter of polarizing debate, with those in support of and opposition to lowering the drinking age presenting valid arguments. The present paper discusses the same argument with a subjective bias towards supporting calls for the US legislators to lower the legal drinking age to 18 years.

The Prohibition during the 1920s has been widely scrutinized and is often used as an example today to show how banning a specific substance after it has been in wide circulation is a wasted effort. Many historians, economists, and Americans have analyzed the complications during the Prohibition and have culminated their thoughts to provide an accurate and in depth analysis of what caused the Prohibition to fail. Similarly, experts have presented data that shows just how drastically each year differed from one another during the Prohibition. However, there are many factors that affected each individual year that ultimately culminated to not only a universal distaste for the Prohibition, but for a complete repeal of the ban on alcohol nearly ten years later. Although the Prohibition is widely considered a failure in the sense that it did not properly moderate the selling and drinking of alcohol, the basic idea upon which the Prohibition was founded can be used to moderate drinking in a different manner that may better society as a whole.

In January 1920 the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of American took effect in the beginning of Prohibition. That is, that laws preventing the sale, shipment, and distribution of alcohol beverages in the United States. It was no sudden impulse of Congress and or the states, this came after eighty years of agitation, political posturing and being sick of crime rates being outrageous. Daniel Okrent seeks to explain the build up to the era passage of the Amendments, the public’s activities in the age of Prohibition, the ultimate repeal of the law by the 21st Amendment, and the final outcomes of how this affected everything.

Since the states increased their drinking age to 21 in 1987, every citizen of this country between the ages of 18 and 20 have been oppressed by the very people elected to power to protect their rights. It is evident that the legal drinking age among Americans should be lowered to the legal age of adulthood, 18 years. At this age, any American can marry without their Parent’s approval and can move out of their guardian’s house and live on their own. Why are these adults deprived of their right to consume alcohol? A police officer unexpectedly arrived at a party where many young adults were drinking alcoholic beverages. He asked to see two young gentlemen’s identification to prove that they were of legal age to be consuming. Both were

Louisiana has the lowest rate of arrests for liquor law violations with a rate of 12 arrests per 100,000 in the population; South Dakota has the highest rate with 561 per 100,000 (Wagenaar and Wolfson 39). Despite these numbers of arrests through appropriate law enforcement, underage individuals are still able to access alcohol in many areas. In a recent study, underage males successfully purchased packaged beer in 97 percent of attempts in Washington D.C., 80 percent in Westchester County, New York, and 44 percent in Albany/Schenectady Counties in New York. A similar study found that underage youth were refused alcohol sales in only one-third of 100 establishments tested in eight sights across the United States (Wagenaar and Wolfson 38). It is believe that this perceived leniency in the enforcement creates an environment that enables binge drinking among those that are underage.